The Works of Edgar Allan Poe – Volume 5

TO HELEN

 
     HELEN, thy beauty is to me
         Like those Nicean barks of yore,
     That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
         The weary way-worn wanderer bore
         To his own native shore.
 
 
     On desperate seas long wont to roam,
         Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
     Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
         To the glory that was Greece,
     And the grandeur that was Rome.
 
 
     Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
         How statue-like I me thee stand,
     The agate lamp within thy hand!
         Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
         Are Holy-land!
 

1831.

THE VALLEY OF UNREST

 
     Once it smiled a silent dell
     Where the people did not dwell;
     They had gone unto the wars,
     Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
     Nightly, from their azure towers,
     To keep watch above the flowers,
     In the midst of which all day
     The red sun-light lazily lay.
     Now each visiter shall confess
     The sad valley’s restlessness.
     Nothing there is motionless —
     Nothing save the airs that brood
     Over the magic solitude.
     Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
     That palpitate like the chill seas
     Around the misty Hebrides!
     Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
     That rustle through the unquiet Heaven
     Uneasily, from morn till even,
     Over the violets there that lie
     In myriad types of the human eye —
     Over the lilies there that wave
     And weep above a nameless grave!
     They wave: – from out their fragrant tops
     Eternal dews come down in drops.
     They weep: – from off their delicate stems
     Perennial tears descend in gems.
 

1831.

ISRAFEL³⁷

 
     IN Heaven a spirit doth dwell
         “Whose heart-strings are a lute;”
      None sing so wildly well
     As the angel Israfel,
     And the giddy stars (so legends tell)
     Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
         Of his voice, all mute.
 
 
     Tottering above
         In her highest noon
         The enamoured moon
     Blushes with love,
         While, to listen, the red levin
         (With the rapid Pleiads, even,
         Which were seven,)
         Pauses in Heaven
 
 
     And they say (the starry choir
         And all the listening things)
     That Israfeli’s fire
     Is owing to that lyre
         By which he sits and sings —
     The trembling living wire
     Of those unusual strings.
 
 
     But the skies that angel trod,
         Where deep thoughts are a duty —
     Where Love’s a grown up God —
         W/here the Houri glances are
     Imbued with all the beauty
         Which we worship in a star.
 
 
     Therefore, thou art not wrong,
         Israfeli, who despisest
     An unimpassion’d song:
     To thee the laurels belong
         Best bard, because the wisest!
     Merrily live, and long!
 
 
     The extacies above
         With thy burning measures suit —
     Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
         With the fervor of thy lute —
         Well may the stars be mute!
 
 
     Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
         Is a world of sweets and sours;
         Our flowers are merely – flowers,
     And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
         Is the sunshine of ours.
 
 
     If I could dwell
     Where Israfel
         Hath dwelt, and he where I,
     He might not sing so wildly well
         A mortal melody,
     While a bolder note than this might swell
         From my lyre within the sky.
 

1836.

TO —

1

 
     The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see
         The wantonest singing birds
     Are lips – and all thy melody
         Of lip-begotten words —
 

2

 
     Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrin’d
         Then desolately fall,
     O! God! on my funereal mind
         Like starlight on a pall —
 

3

 
     Thy heart —thy heart! – I wake and sigh,
         And sleep to dream till day
     Of truth that gold can never buy —
         Of the trifles that it may.
 

1829.

TO —

 
     I HEED not that my earthly lot
         Hath-little of Earth in it —
     That years of love have been forgot
     In the hatred of a minute: —
     I mourn not that the desolate
         Are happier, sweet, than I,
     But that you sorrow for my fate
     Who am a passer-by.
 

1829.

TO THE RIVER —

 
     FAIR river! in thy bright, clear flow
         Of crystal, wandering water,
     Thou art an emblem of the glow
             Of beauty – the unhidden heart —
             The playful maziness of art
     In old Alberto’s daughter;
 
 
     But when within thy wave she looks —
             Which glistens then, and trembles —
     Why, then, the prettiest of brooks
             Her worshipper resembles;
     For in my heart, as in thy stream,
         Her image deeply lies —
     His heart which trembles at the beam
         Of her soul-searching eyes.
 

1829.

SONG

 
     I SAW thee on thy bridal day —
         When a burning blush came o’er thee,
     Though happiness around thee lay,
         The world all love before thee:
 
 
     And in thine eye a kindling light
         (Whatever it might be)
     Was all on Earth my aching sight
        Of Loveliness could see.
 
 
     That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame —
         As such it well may pass —
     Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame
         In the breast of him, alas!
 
 
     Who saw thee on that bridal day,
         When that deep blush would come o’er thee,
     Though happiness around thee lay,
         The world all love before thee.
 

1827.

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD

1

 
     Thy soul shall find itself alone
     ‘Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone —
     Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
     Into thine hour of secrecy:
 

2

 
     Be silent in that solitude
         Which is not loneliness – for then
     The spirits of the dead who stood
         In life before thee are again
     In death around thee – and their will
     Shall then overshadow thee: be still.
 

3

 
     For the night – tho’ clear – shall frown —
     And the stars shall look not down,
     From their high thrones in the Heaven,
     With light like Hope to mortals given —
     But their red orbs, without beam,
     To thy weariness shall seem
     As a burning and a fever
     Which would cling to thee for ever:
 

4

 
     Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish —
     Now are visions ne’er to vanish —
     From thy spirit shall they pass
     No more – like dew-drop from the grass:
 

5

 
     The breeze – the breath of God – is still —
     And the mist upon the hill
     Shadowy – shadowy – yet unbroken,
     Is a symbol and a token —
     How it hangs upon the trees,
     A mystery of mysteries! —
 

1827.

A DREAM

 
     In visions of the dark night
         I have dreamed of joy departed —
     But a waking dreams of life and light
         Hath left me broken-hearted.
 
 
     Ah! what is not a dream by day
         To him whose eyes are cast
     On things around him with a ray
         Turned back upon the past?
 
 
     That holy dream – that holy dream,
         While all the world were chiding,
     Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
         A lonely spirit guiding.
 
 
     What though that light, thro’ storm and night,
         So trembled from afar-
     What could there be more purely bright
         In Truths day-star?
 

1827.

ROMANCE

 
     ROMANCE, who loves to nod and sing,
     With drowsy head and folded wing,
     Among the green leaves as they shake
     Far down within some shadowy lake,
     To me a painted paroquet
     Hath been – a most familiar bird —
     Taught me my alphabet to say —
     To lisp my very earliest word
     While in the wild wood I did lie,
     A child – with a most knowing eye.
 
 
     Of late, eternal Condor years
     So shake the very Heaven on high
     With tumult as they thunder by,
     I have no time for idle cares
     Through gazing on the unquiet sky.
     And when an hour with calmer wings
     Its down upon thy spirit flings —
     That little time with lyre and rhyme
     To while away – forbidden things!
     My heart would feel to be a crime
     Unless it trembled with the strings.
     1829.
 

FAIRY-LAND

 
     DIM vales – and shadowy floods —
     And cloudy-looking woods,
     Whose forms we can’t discover
     For the tears that drip all over
     Huge moons there wax and wane —
     Again – again – again —
     Every moment of the night —
     Forever changing places —
     And they put out the star-light
     With the breath from their pale faces.
     About twelve by the moon-dial
     One, more filmy than the rest
     (A kind which, upon trial,
     They have found to be the best)
     Comes down – still down – and down
     With its centre on the crown
     Of a mountain’s eminence,
     While its wide circumference
     In easy drapery falls
     Over hamlets, over halls,
     Wherever they may be —
     O’er the strange woods – o’er the sea —
     Over spirits on the wing —
     Over every drowsy thing —
     And buries them up quite
     In a labyrinth of light —
     And then, how deep! – O, deep!
     Is the passion of their sleep.
     In the morning they arise,
     And their moony covering
     Is soaring in the skies,
     With the tempests as they toss,
     Like – almost any thing —
     Or a yellow Albatross.
     They use that moon no more
     For the same end as before —
     Videlicet a tent —
     Which I think extravagant:
     Its atomies, however,
     Into a shower dissever,
     Of which those butterflies,
     Of Earth, who seek the skies,
     And so come down again
     (Never-contented things!)
     Have brought a specimen
     Upon their quivering wings.
     1831.
 

THE LAKE – TO —

 
     IN spring of youth it was my lot
     To haunt of the wide earth a spot
     The which I could not love the less —
     So lovely was the loneliness
     Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
     And the tall pines that tower’d around.
 
 
     But when the Night had thrown her pall
     Upon that spot, as upon all,
     And the mystic wind went by
     Murmuring in melody —
     Then – ah then I would awake
     To the terror of the lone lake.
 
 
     Yet that terror was not fright,
     But a tremulous delight —
     A feeling not the jewelled mine
     Could teach or bribe me to define —
     Nor Love – although the Love were thine.
 
 
     Death was in that poisonous wave,
     And in its gulf a fitting grave
     For him who thence could solace bring
     To his lone imagining —
     Whose solitary soul could make
     An Eden of that dim lake.
     1827.
 

EVENING STAR

 
     ‘TWAS noontide of summer,
        And midtime of night,
     And stars, in their orbits,
        Shone pale, through the light
     Of the brighter, cold moon.
        ‘Mid planets her slaves,
     Herself in the Heavens,
        Her beam on the waves.
 
 
        I gazed awhile
        On her cold smile;
     Too cold-too cold for me —
        There passed, as a shroud,
        A fleecy cloud,
     And I turned away to thee,
 
 
        Proud Evening Star,
        In thy glory afar
     And dearer thy beam shall be;
        For joy to my heart
        Is the proud part
     Thou bearest in Heaven at night.,
        And more I admire
        Thy distant fire,
     Than that colder, lowly light.
     1827.
 

“THE HAPPIEST DAY.”

I

 
     THE happiest day-the happiest hour
     My seared and blighted heart hath known,
     The highest hope of pride and power,
     I feel hath flown.
     Of power! said I? Yes! such I ween
     But they have vanished long, alas!
     The visions of my youth have been
     But let them pass.
 

III

 
     And pride, what have I now with thee?
     Another brow may ev’n inherit
     The venom thou hast poured on me
     Be still my spirit!
 

IV

 
     The happiest day-the happiest hour
     Mine eyes shall see-have ever seen
     The brightest glance of pride and power
     I feet have been:
 

V

 
     But were that hope of pride and power
     Now offered with the pain
     Ev’n then I felt-that brightest hour
     I would not live again:
 

VI

 
     For on its wing was dark alloy
     And as it fluttered-fell
     An essence-powerful to destroy
     A soul that knew it well.
     1827.
 

IMITATION

 
     A dark unfathom’d tide
     Of interminable pride —
     A mystery, and a dream,
     Should my early life seem;
     I say that dream was fraught
     With a wild, and waking thought
     Of beings that have been,
     Which my spirit hath not seen,
     Had I let them pass me by,
     With a dreaming eye!
     Let none of earth inherit
     That vision on my spirit;
     Those thoughts I would control
     As a spell upon his soul:
     For that bright hope at last
     And that light time have past,
     And my worldly rest hath gone
     With a sigh as it pass’d on
     I care not tho’ it perish
     With a thought I then did cherish.
     1827.
 

HYMN TO ARISTOGEITON AND HARMODIUS

Translation from the Greek

I

 
     WREATHED in myrtle, my sword I’ll conceal
     Like those champions devoted and brave,
     When they plunged in the tyrant their steel,
     And to Athens deliverance gave.
 

II

 
     Beloved heroes! your deathless souls roam
     In the joy breathing isles of the blest;
     Where the mighty of old have their home
     Where Achilles and Diomed rest
 

III

 
     In fresh myrtle my blade I’ll entwine,
     Like Harmodius, the gallant and good,
     When he made at the tutelar shrine
     A libation of Tyranny’s blood.
 

IV

 
     Ye deliverers of Athens from shame!
     Ye avengers of Liberty’s wrongs!
     Endless ages shall cherish your fame,
     Embalmed in their echoing songs!
     1827.
 

DREAMS

 
     Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!
     My spirit not awak’ning, till the beam
     Of an Eternity should bring the morrow:
     Yes! tho’ that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,
     ‘Twere better than the dull reality
     Of waking life to him whose heart shall be,
     And hath been ever, on the chilly earth,
     A chaos of deep passion from his birth!
 
 
     But should it be – that dream eternally
     Continuing – as dreams have been to me
     In my young boyhood – should it thus be given,
     ‘Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven!
     For I have revell’d, when the sun was bright
     In the summer sky; in dreamy fields of light,
     And left unheedingly my very heart
     In climes of mine imagining – apart
     From mine own home, with beings that have been
     Of mine own thought – what more could I have seen?
 
 
     ‘Twas once & only once & the wild hour
     From my rememberance shall not pass – some power
     Or spell had bound me – ‘twas the chilly wind
     Came o’er me in the night & left behind
     Its image on my spirit, or the moon
     Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon
     Too coldly – or the stars – howe’er it was
     That dream was as that night wind – let it pass.
 
 
     I have been happy – tho’ but in a dream
     I have been happy – & I love the theme —
     Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life —
     As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife
     Of semblance with reality which brings
     To the delirious eye more lovely things
     Of Paradise & Love – & all our own!
     Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.
 
 
         {From an earlier MS. Than in the book – ED.}
 

“IN YOUTH I HAVE KNOWN ONE”

 
     How often we forget all time, when lone
     Admiring Nature’s universal throne;
     Her woods – her wilds – her mountains-the intense
     Reply of Hers to Our intelligence!
 

I

 
     IN youth I have known one with whom the Earth
         In secret communing held-as he with it,
     In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:
         Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit
     From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth
         A passionate light such for his spirit was fit
     And yet that spirit knew-not in the hour
         Of its own fervor-what had o’er it power.
 

II

 
     Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought
         To a fever* by the moonbeam that hangs o’er,
     But I will half believe that wild light fraught
         With more of sovereignty than ancient lore
     Hath ever told-or is it of a thought
         The unembodied essence, and no more
     That with a quickening spell doth o’er us pass
         As dew of the night-time, o’er the summer grass?
 

III

 
     Doth o’er us pass, when, as th’ expanding eye
         To the loved object-so the tear to the lid
     Will start, which lately slept in apathy?
         And yet it need not be – (that object) hid
     From us in life-but common-which doth lie
         Each hour before us – but then only bid
     With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken
         T’ awake us – ‘Tis a symbol and a token
 

IV

 
     Of what in other worlds shall be – and given
         In beauty by our God, to those alone
     Who otherwise would fall from life and Heaven
         Drawn by their heart’s passion, and that tone,
     That high tone of the spirit which hath striven
         Though not with Faith-with godliness – whose throne
     With desperate energy ‘t hath beaten down;
         Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.
          * Query “fervor”? – ED.
 

A PÆAN

I

 
     How shall the burial rite be read?
         The solemn song be sung?
     The requiem for the loveliest dead,
         That ever died so young?
 

II

 
     Her friends are gazing on her,
         And on her gaudy bier,
     And weep! – oh! to dishonor
         Dead beauty with a tear!
 

III

 
     They loved her for her wealth —
         And they hated her for her pride —
     But she grew in feeble health,
         And they love her – that she died.
 

IV

 
     They tell me (while they speak
         Of her “costly broider’d pall”)
     That my voice is growing weak —
         That I should not sing at all —
 

V

 
     Or that my tone should be
         Tun’d to such solemn song
     So mournfully – so mournfully,
         That the dead may feel no wrong.
 

VI

 
     But she is gone above,
         With young Hope at her side,
     And I am drunk with love
         Of the dead, who is my bride. —
 

VII

 
     Of the dead – dead who lies
         All perfum’d there,
     With the death upon her eyes,
         And the life upon her hair.
 

VIII

 
     Thus on the coffin loud and long
         I strike – the murmur sent
     Through the grey chambers to my song,
         Shall be the accompaniment.
 

IX

 
     Thou died’st in thy life’s June —
         But thou did’st not die too fair:
     Thou did’st not die too soon,
         Nor with too calm an air.
 

X

 
     From more than fiends on earth,
         Thy life and love are riven,
     To join the untainted mirth
         Of more than thrones in heaven —
 

XII

 
     Therefore, to thee this night
         I will no requiem raise,
     But waft thee on thy flight,
         With a Pæan of old days.
 

NOTES

30. On the “Poems written in Youth” little comment is needed. This section includes the pieces printed for first volume of 1827 (which was subsequently suppressed), such poems from the first and second published volumes of 1829 and 1831 as have not already been given in their revised versions, and a few others collected from various sources. “Al Aaraaf” first appeared, with the sonnet “To Silence” prefixed to it, in 1829, and is, substantially, as originally issued. In the edition for 1831, however, this poem, its author’s longest, was introduced by the following twenty-nine lines, which have been omitted in – all subsequent collections:

AL AARAAF

 
     Mysterious star!
     Thou wert my dream
     All a long summer night —
     Be now my theme!
     By this clear stream,
     Of thee will I write;
     Meantime from afar
     Bathe me in light I
 
 
     Thy world has not the dross of ours,
     Yet all the beauty-all the flowers
     That list our love or deck our bowers
     In dreamy gardens, where do lie
     Dreamy maidens all the day;
     While the silver winds of Circassy
     On violet couches faint away.
     Little – oh “little dwells in thee”
      Like unto what on earth we see:
     Beauty’s eye is here the bluest
     In the falsest and untruest – On the sweetest
     air doth float
     The most sad and solemn note —
 
 
     If with thee be broken hearts,
     Joy so peacefully departs,
     That its echo still doth dwell,
     Like the murmur in the shell.
     Thou! thy truest type of grief
     Is the gently falling leaf!
     Thy framing is so holy
     Sorrow is not melancholy.
 

31. The earliest version of “Tamerlane” was included in the suppressed volume of 1827, but differs very considerably from the poem as now published. The present draft, besides innumerable verbal alterations and improvements upon the original, is more carefully punctuated, and, the lines being indented, presents a more pleasing appearance, to the eye at least.

32. “To Helen” first appeared in the 1831 volume, as did also “The Valley of Unrest” (as “The Valley Nis”), “Israfel,” and one or two others of the youthful pieces. The poem styled “Romance,” constituted the Preface of the 1829 volume, but with the addition of the following lines:

 
     Succeeding years, too wild for song,
     Then rolled like tropic storms along,
     Where, through the garish lights that fly
     Dying along the troubled sky,
     Lay bare, through vistas thunder-riven,
     The blackness of the general Heaven,
     That very blackness yet doth Ring
     Light on the lightning’s silver wing.
 
 
     For being an idle boy lang syne;
     Who read Anacreon and drank wine,
     I early found Anacreon rhymes
     Were almost passionate sometimes —
     And by strange alchemy of brain
     His pleasures always turned to pain —
     His naiveté to wild desire —
     His wit to love-his wine to fire —
     And so, being young and dipt in folly,
     I fell in love with melancholy,
 
 
     And used to throw my earthly rest
     And quiet all away in jest —
     I could not love except where Death
     Was mingling his with Beauty’s breath —
     Or Hymen, Time, and Destiny,
     Were stalking between her and me.
 
 
     But now my soul hath too much room —
     Gone are the glory and the gloom —
     The black hath mellow’d into gray,
     And all the fires are fading away.
 
 
     My draught of passion hath been deep —
     I revell’d, and I now would sleep
     And after drunkenness of soul
     Succeeds the glories of the bowl
     An idle longing night and day
     To dream my very life away.
 
 
     But dreams – of those who dream as I,
     Aspiringly, are damned, and die:
     Yet should I swear I mean alone,
     By notes so very shrilly blown,
     To break upon Time’s monotone,
     While yet my vapid joy and grief
     Are tintless of the yellow leaf —
     Why not an imp the graybeard hath,
     Will shake his shadow in my path —
     And e’en the graybeard will o’erlook
     Connivingly my dreaming-book.